[00:00:00.000]
[Screen: The Church challenges the credibility of the contributors appearing in this program, and their statements.
As of the airing of this episode, the Church has not agreed to participate.
Information the Church provided about matters discussed in this series can be viewed at aetv.com/aftermathletters]

[The Church disputes many of the statements made by Leah Remini.
…viewers should know the duplicity at work when Ms. Remini stage-managed her departure from the Church of Scientology…
…she desperately tried to remain a Scientologist in 2013, knowing full well she was on the verge of being expelled for refusing to abide by the high level of ethics and decency Scientologists are expected to maintain…
…her transgressions were so egregious she was expelled, which remains the source of her bitterness today…
(Excerpt from letter received from the Church of Scientology 09/09/2016)]

[00:00:26.580]
[Scene: LR in studio; dark background]

LR: Here’s what the Church has to say about Aaron Smith-Levin:

LR (reading): “The Church disputes many of the statements made by Aaron Smith-Levin. Membership was terminated after a series of physically abusive and violent attacks on fellow staff members. He poisoned his mother and father-in-law’s relationship with their daughter Heather and their grandchildren through his hate campaign.

He is lying about his family and former Church to cover up his own history of erratic and violent behavior.”

LR: Never. I’ve never been here. There’s no life to be enjoyed when you’re a Scientologist. You know, like going on vacations or taking the time to enjoy this life is not being, you know, not the goal. The goal is you do the work now so that there is a life for your children, you know?

While I was working on King of Queens, you know, I would, I would come here to Florida to do work. From nine in the morning until ten at night, while my co-stars were going to the Bahamas or going to Hawaii with their family. You know? For most of my life in Scientology I was just doing the work. Every day, all day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

LR (to someone off-camera to her left): Are you okay?

Off camera: Do you have some weed on you?

LR: What?

Female: I want to buy some weed, that’s it.

LR: No you shouldn’t be buying weed.

Female: I wanna smoke weed, that s— smells loud as f—. Whatever y’all have on that pizza, smells…

LR: Got you.

Female: It smells good.

LR: Got you. Be careful, yeah?

LR: Here’s what’s so funny. I want to save her, you know what I mean? Like I want to do something about it. Like I want to go tell her she needs to go home.

Me as a Scientologist walking away from her right now? Like I’m feeling faint emotions of guilt for not doing anything about it. It’s like that girl coming up to me and asking me if I had drugs would only reiterate to me as a Scientologist, “I better get back. The world needs me. Look how f—-d up it is. You know? Our work is so important. That’s the mindset.

MR: The Flag Service Organization, the Flag Estates Organization, the Religious Technology Center, the Commodore’s Messenger Org and a few others, all of those things form what’s called the Flag Land Base.

[Screen: Mike and Leah are in Clearwater to talk to former Church member Aaron Smith-Levin. His wife, Heather, has declined to speak publicly.]

LR (in car, to MR): So we’re going to be talking to Aaron. And now his wife doesn’t want to speak on camera?

MR: Right.

[00:05:47.000]
LR (in studio): The reason why Scientologists don’t speak out is because they usually have family members in the Church. And it is a moral sin to speak out against Scientology. You can leave quietly. Don’t put any pressure on any family members not to do Scientology. But if you speak out against it, um, pressure will be put on the remaining family members in Scientology to disconnect from that family member.

MR (in car): This house here on the left, Leah, Heather’s mother and father own that house and rent it out. And they come here often. And that’s Aaron’s house, right across the street. And they do not talk. They see Aaron and Heather outside. They go inside.

LR: And they have ki–, they have grandchildren.

MR: And they have three beautiful (chuckles) daughters who are sitting over here–

LR: So their kids will be out here and their grandparents ignore them.

MR: Correct.

LR: It’s so f—ing disgusting.

MR (laughing): It is. It’s really gross.

[00:06:46.250]
[Scene: Side view of AARON SMITH-LEVIN
Screen: SCIENTOLOGIST FOR 29 YEARS
FORMER SEA ORG MEMBER
LEFT 2014]

AS: My name is Aaron Smith-Levin, and I was a Scientologist for about twenty-nine years. And I was in Scientology until two years ago, 2014, when I was thirty-three.

[Scene: LR and MR entering AS’s house]

AS: How are you? Nice to meet you.

LR: Nice to meet you.

He just told me that you send your babies over there and their grandparents don’t–, just ignore them?

AS: My mother-in-law. She is the one who is much more nervous about it, and would go inside and the kids would go in the house to find her, and she’d, they couldn’t find her. She’d leave.

LR: No! She would hide.

AS: Yeah.

LR: She would hide from her grandbabies?

MR: (smiling)

AS: And not because she didn’t want to see them. Because she didn’t want to get in trouble.

LR: Right.

AS: Because the Church said, “It is not okay for you to see your grandchildren, and for you to be over there, and for you to see your grandchildren.”

[00:07:30.200]
LR: (shocked expression)

AS: Everything you’re doing right now, you’re doing it cuz you think you’re somehow trying to hold the family together, or what’s left of the family. But you’re the second generation and the third generation, all they know is Scientology is the reason they don’t have a f—ing family. It’s crazy.

LR: I know.

AS: It’s crazy.

[Scene: front yard of AS’s house]

AS (off camera): My mom was raising me and my twin brother Collin as a, as a single mother. My parents were never married. We were living on the east coast, so we were like in south Jersey, Philadelphia.

AS: Her whole life, she always had the feeling that there has to be something more, something greater to life than, you know, what we see and what we spend our, you know, day being concerned about, just, you know, day to day life. There has to be something more, something greater, that gives it greater meaning.

AS: She felt like she had found something in Scientology that gave her the answers in a way that made sense to her. And she jumped in pretty, pretty heavy.

She joined staff. She decided to work for the Church of Scientology, pretty much right off the bat. Like within the first few weeks.

I would say the first moment when Scientology started to be something that I personally was paying attention to, right, as opposed to just being something that my mom was doing, that first moment was in the 1993 IAS event.

AS: So the IAS is the International Association of Scientologists. That event was particularly to announce the IRS tax exemption.

[Screen: After waging a war against the IRS for 26 years, in 1993, the Church of Scientology was recognized as a religion and granted tax-exempt status

[Scene: IAS event 1993

DM: On October the first, the IRS issued letters recognizing Scientology and every one of its organizations as FULLY TAX EXEMPT!

[Screen: By this time, the Church owed the IRS more than $1 billion in taxes]

[00:09:13.127]
MR (in studio): I think that, that if the exemption had not happened, that Scientology would still be around in some form. But it would be far less powerful and have far less money than it does now.

[Scene: International Association of Scientologists, 1993]

AS: I was led to believe the IRS had been persecuting Scientology forever and David Miscavige was now the first one to ever make the IRS recognize Scientology as being fully tax exempt. Scientologists did have tax exemption before, and it took it away, because it found L Ron Hubbard was using the money for his own personal gain. I never knew that.

[Scene: International Association of Scientologists, 1993, with text graphics
THE WAR IS OVER!]

AS: So I’m watching this event and it culminates with the announcement that the war is over, and everyone goes crazy. You know, it’s like a ten minute standing ovation or something like that. And I just remember the feeling of elation that I personally felt as a twelve-year-old.

And you know? I’m not even sure I considered myself a Scientologist really at that point. I’m not even sure I even gave it much thought. But at that event is when I was like, “Okay, this is something.”

LR: That was a big thing. “We won the war!” You know?

AS: The IRS had finally acknowledged we are a real religion. We are a real church. You will stop attacking us.

LR: You understood that “Wow, the government is saying what I’m doing and what my mother’s involved in, is legit.”

AS: Exactly.

LR: Yeah, so that, that’s a powerful message to be sending to parishioners. But to children.

[Scene: Pac Base at night.]

[00:10:45.207]
[Black screen]

[Screen: The Church challenges the credibility of the contributors appearing in this program, and their statements.
As of the airing of this episode, the Church has not agreed to participate.
Information the Church provided about matters discussed in this series can be viewed at: aetv.com/aftermathletters]

[Scene: Clearwater buildings]

[00:11:10.000]
AS: The IRS had finally acknowledged we are a real religion. We are a real church. You will stop attacking us.

LR: That was a big thing.

MR: (eyebrows raised)

AS: And that event was the start of a huge campaign to recruit people for staff and send them here to Clearwater for training to be auditors.

AS (in studio): And that’s when my mom started explaining to me as best as she could what it meant to be an auditor and that the idea was we were all going to join staff to all train as auditors.

[Scientology promotional video
[Screen: FLAG INTERNSHIP

Female: We’re ready to audit. And audit. And audit. Hours and hours. Every day.]

LR: What happens in this auditing is they have this thing called an E-Meter. You would sit with a person who’s trained in the technology of helping people to get rid of this part of your mind, that is reactive, that is causing you to think

We didn’t realize it at the time that our trip to Flag was part of the first Golden Age of Tech training evolution.

[Scientology promotional video: DM shaking hands with a man]

[00:13:05.226]
MR: David Miscavige had come up with the new way of now training all auditors that it had all been being done wrong for the fifty years previously.

[Scene: Hubbard “auditing” a tomato.]

He had now discovered the real way that it should be done. So every auditor in the world had to be trained newly in this Golden Age of Tech.

[00:13:27.606]
AS: You know the whole IRS tax exemption was really protecting the religion. But now

[Scene: DM at the podium]

AS: David Miscavige was kind of moving into his role of shaping um, I hate to use the word scripture, because it’s bulllsh–. Scientology doesn’t have a scripture. But, shaping, shaping the scripture of Scientology.

[Scene: photos of L. Ron Hubbard]

So to a purist who feels that the only true things in Scientology are things that came out of L. Ron Hubbard’s mouth, many feel that that was the first time that David Miscavige changed Scientology to match his own image of what he felt was proper Scientology.

[Scene: photos of AS and his brother]

And I know I’m speaking about it, slightly derisively, but I had no problem with the fact that we were being groomed to be the new and the best and the greatest thing that ever happened to Scientology. And I really embraced it. (laughs) Actually.

For the next three years, I basically lived as a Sea Org, as a Sea Org member.

LR: And what does that mean?

AS: You’re studying Scientology full time from you know 8:30 in the morning to 10 o’clock at night. And those are your study hours. I mean you’re up at seven, you’re in bed at eleven.

LR: And who’s taking care of you?

AS: Well, in a respect we’re taking care of ourselves. But our mom is there too. She just lives in her own apartment with other women. Because it’s segregated: men and women.

LR: Could you imagine your children living in an apartment by themselves?

AS: No! I mean it seems crazy!

LR: But you know, as a child you’re thinking, “I’m pretty important. I’m doing some important work.” You have this now mission.

AS: You’re studying Scientology full time. And that might sound like a really tedious, boring experience. But me and my brother Collin are doing this at a time when there’s like a thousand other people from every city in the world doing the exact same thing. It, it really reinforced that thing like, “This is the sh–.

LR: Yeah, and you’re part of something powerful!

AS: This is–. We are on the crest of the wave of something important, you know.

LR: Yes, yes.

AS: And we both really excelled in what we were doing. We were being acknowledged and recognized for how well we were doing in our, in our training.

So David Miscavige had put together these two special courses that were supposed to be the hardest versions of these courses ever done. These drills that auditors-in-training do to practice how to use an E-Meter in an auditing session, they’re videoed.

[Scene: auditing room; camera in ceiling; pale green E-meter]

AS: So there’s a camera from behind shooting the E-Meter dial, with the needle. And then there’s a camera shooting the auditor-in-training’s face.

[Scene: E-meter; auditor]

These mock auditing sessions are recorded and scrutinized. Looking for any mistakes on calling the E-Meter read incorrectly. It’s going to be reviewed by the supervisor and passed. And then it’s going to be sent to International Management and passed. Collin at the age of fourteen was the first person to ever get a final video pass on how to perfectly operate an E-Meter.

Flag is supposed to be the best, highest level Scientology Church in the world.

LR: Yeah, it’s the “mecca.”

AS: And auditors here are supposed to be the best auditors in the world.

LR: Yes.

[Scene: views of Flag]

AS: And so it might, it might sound a little absurd, but you know, my brother Collin was held up as the standard of the first person to ever learn how to correctly operate an E-Meter.

LR: Right. Not LRH. But, yeah.

AS: So that kind of launched my brother Collin to kind of a little celebrity status at Flag.

MR: (smiling)

[Scene: photo of young man]

AS: And then David Miscavige decided that the video that people were doing to finish the program at the time when my brother finished the program, that he wanted the video to be done a different way.

LR: (nods)

AS: So he made everyone who had already passed this video on how to use the meter properly–

LR: –to do it again.

AS: –to do it again, and do it in a way that made it much longer, and much harder.

And Collin couldn’t get through it.

LR: Right.

AS: I think he felt really embarrassed that he couldn’t pass this video the second time. Also in Scientology, there’s kind of a principle that if you are not doing well in your courses, it’s because you are doing something unethical, that you’re not being honest about. The way they describe it is “If ethics is in, then the tech will go in. So if the tech doesn’t seem to be working well, it’s because you are being unethical and you haven’t come clean about it.”

So when he went back to try to do this video the second time, you know he was getting a lot of pressure, um that there was something wrong with him. That he wasn’t getting this done. And so one morning, when we got up and were in line to get on the bus to go to the buildings where we study, instead of getting on the bus, he skipped it, called my dad in Minneapolis and said, “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

Dad said, “Take a cab to the airport” and bought him a ticket to Minnesota.

[00:18:09.038]
[Screen: The Church challenges the credibility of the contributors appearing in this program, and their statements.
As of the airing of this episode, the Church has not agreed to participate.
Information the Church provided about matters discussed in this series can be viewed at:
aetv.com/aftermathletters]

[Scene: driving in Clearwater ]

[00:18:23.620]
AS (at home): Really, once someone blows, they are considered to kind of be a criminal.

[Screen: BLOW3
An unauthorized departure from any Scientology organization]

[00:18:33.780]
MR (in studio): Scientologists believe that someone leaves Scientology for one reason alone. They have crimes. They have transgressed against the good of Scientology. And that it is their moral obligation to unburden the person of their crimes for having left. So they will spend as long as it takes interrogating the person as to what the crimes are that they have conducted that has caused them to want to leave.

[Scene: photo of Collin and Aaron]

AS: So my mom had got on a plane to go get him. And they brought him back.

LR: So he’s now gone from being the super-star to someone who is now Scientology-demoted, and now his existence is going into a room that is being filmed and recorded, with somebody who is badgering him for transgressions.

[Scene: enactment. E-meter; young man on the cans, looking concerned]

AS: Exactly.

LR: Over and over again, hour after hour, “What have you done? What transgressions don’t we know about? What are your evil intentions towards David Miscavige? What are your evil intentions toward Scientology?”

LR (in studio): What does it do to a person who is continually put on an E-Meter and asked “What are your crimes? What are you hiding from me?” Um, that has to do some damage to a person’s mental state.

[Scene: auditing environment, person on the cans]

LR: And that’s what the Church does. Continually. Throughout your Scientology career, until eventually you just become a zombie. And you just let it go. And you go, “It’s not worth the fight.”

[00:20:11.630]
[Scene: Enactment of young man on the cans]

LR (with AS and MR): So day in, day out your brother is being abused. And he somehow gets through this?

AS: He gets through it, and he decides to stay.

[Scene: photo of Aaron and Collin]

AS: After all was said and done, he stayed, and he um, was considered part of the group again, and he went back on to his uh, training.

[Scene: David Miscavige studying papers at a desk]

AS: And then David Miscavige decided that anyone who was training at Flag who had previously blown, was now no longer qualified to be at Flag. And unfortunately, that included Collin.

Now he’s being kicked out of Flag.

[00:20:53.330]
[Screen: At the age of fifteen, Collin was demoted to a Scientology staff position in their hometown of Philadelphia]

No-one at Flag told my mom she should go with Collin. She wasn’t expected to go back to Philadelphia with my fifteen-year-old twin brother. She was expected to stay.

[Scene: driving on an urban street]

AS (crying): I think that when he was going back to Philadelphia, he was definitely sort of scared and apprehensive about being sent back on his own. And I feel that he would have been embarrassed to ask my mom to stay with him.

[Scene: family photo of Collin, Mom and Aaron]

AS: So he goes back to Philadelphia, of course as a failure. You’re supposed to go back to your Church once you’ve finished your training.

Collin was sent back as just a nothing. A piece of sh- failure.

LR: And how old is he now?

AS: He’s fifteen. He should be in school still. Right?

[Scene: family photo]

AS: At the time, I was not upset with my mom for letting this happen. I was more upset with Collin for being such a screw-up, you know?

So I finished my training. I’m a super-star, cuz I was now the first, I was now the first person in the world to finish the training I was doing.

The extra time that I spent at Flag doing that extra training, being responsible, living the Scientology life, has put me in a better position to control life than what I see in my brother.

I guess he got a GED. And um, he enrolled at the University of New Mexico.

[00:22:28.200]
[Scene: photo of Collin Smith-Levin]

And he was really excelling as a student. He was a, he was like an honor student at UNM. And through some phone calls he had with me, he had said he was writing college papers on how Scientology is a destructive cult that tears apart families. That was literally how he communicated to me on the phone.

[Screen: HCOB CRITICS OF SCIENTOLOGY4
Highlighted: Now get this as a technical fact, not a hopeful idea. Every time we have investigated the background of a critic of Scientology, we have found crimes for which that person or group could be imprisoned under existing law. We do not find critics of Scientology who do not have criminal pasts. Over and over we prove this.]

AS: You can’t call Scientology a cult and be taken seriously by a Scientologist. To a Scientologist that’s–

LR: –insanity

AS: –the most absurd thing.

LR: Insanity.

AS: Like they’re the anti-cult.

LR: You have gone crazy.

AS: Right.

LR: Yeah, you can see somebody’s face that you’ve been looking at your whole life. And then when they say that, you’re like, “You’re a f—ing lunatic.”

AS: Right. “You are insane. You are batsh– insane.”

LR: You stopped being my mother. You stopped being my sister, my brother, my husband, my wife. And you become a crazy person in our eyes.

AS: Right.

[00:23:18.420]
LR (in studio): I was fighting the critics of Scientology even as a young child. I was told to stand out on the corner and hand out Scientology pamphlets.

I remember people hitting it out of my hand. And yelling, “You’re in a cult!” You know, “Get out of this cult, kid.” You know, and it was like the hatred that was coming towards me as a young person only solidified that I’m, I’m, “I need to fight. And I need to defend this Church of Scientology.”

They probably wouldn’t have any members if they didn’t create the world as your enemy mentality.

[Scene: photo of AS as a young man, in a blue uniform shirt]

[00:23:54.100]
AS: I mean honestly if you ever hear me characterize my state of mind at that time as being similar to the Hitler youth, it’s just blind allegiance. Unflinching allegiance, and no remorse.

I got off the phone with him. I wrote, I wrote a big report on him and the conversation. And it wasn’t even, it wasn’t like a vicious thing of “I’m going to get my brother kicked out of the Church.” It was “My brother is committing suppressive acts and has been for a long time.”

Highlighted: It is a high crime to publicly depart Scientology.
Public disavowal of Scientology or Scientologists in good standing with Scientology organizations.
Public statements against Scientology or Scientologists but not to Committees of Evidence duly convened.]

LR: For that you wrote an internal report called a Knowledge Report in Scientology.

AS: Right.

[Screen: KNOWLEDGE REPORT
A report submitted to Church officials, informing on a person or situation believed to be in violation of Church policy.]

[00:24:42.110]
MR: Knowledge reports are things that Scientologists are expected to write and report to the Church about “non-optimum” situations. Scientologists are expected to write such reports because they believe that by writing them, the person who is transgressing in some fashion or doing something wrong, will be pulled in by the Church and corrected. And that will be for their own good.

LR (in studio): If you are found guilty of a crime, and somebody knew about it and didn’t tell us, they’re going to be punished the same.

LR: So you learn that “I better write this thing up that I heard about. Because if I don’t, I’m going to get in trouble, just like the other person.” So you’ll write somebody up. Doesn’t matter if it’s your husband, sister, child.

KR (Knowledge Report) from Craig Reisdorf on Gary and Lois Reisdorf

S1E6(YT) | 00.25.43.379

[00:26:02.799]
LR: Your personal relationships are being corroded over time. So it’s easy to walk away from someone. It’s easy to be disassociated from any real emotion from people that you love.

[00:26:02.860]
MR: Knowledge reports are the epitome of a snitching culture.

KR from Luke Wilhite on Creed Pearson [.634 seconds]

S1E6(YT) | 00.26.03.333

S1E6(YT) | 00.26.03.933

KR from Craig Reisdorf on Lois and Gary Reisdorf [ 3.804 seconds]

S1E6(YT) | 00.26.04.04.000

[00:26:07.837]
LR (in studio): And the intention is to help the person, not to hurt them. But it does create a fear factor. So you do narc on each other. And the Church has put this, this policy in play under the guise of “Well you don’t want to, you wouldn’t just watch somebody put a needle in their arm. I mean, you love them, right?”And helping them means reporting them.

AS: And so I wrote the report. My mom wrote a report as well. And I think about four to six weeks later, we got the official word that Collin had been officially kicked out of the Church.

LR: Officially kicked out of the Church and that means that nobody who is affiliated with the Church can talk to him.

AS: Right.

And if they do, they would themselves–

LR: –be declared.

AS: –be, be kicked out of the Church.

LR: Right.

AS: And long story short, he sent me an e-mail afterwards, like “You guys are dead to me.”

And I realize what he’s doing there. He’s doing to us what he already knows what we’re going to do to him.

LR: Uh-hm.

AS: Now I say that because it makes me feel less guilty about writing a report on him that’s going to get him declared. But just the fact that (crying) any of us had to make any f—ing decision about that at all.

LR: Right.

AS: You know? Or that, you know, unconditional love does not exist in Scientology.

LR: Right.

[Screen: Up to this point, Aaron’s mother was watching the filming of this show]

[00:27:37.618]
LR (in studio): Gail was watching us film the interview with Aaron. And she had to leave. She, she just couldn’t even watch it. And I couldn’t imagine her pain of having to deal with the guilt that she gave up her son because she thought she was helping him by doing that. The Church was telling her, “Look. Push him away. Shun him.

[Scene: family photo of Collin and mother]

LR: That’s the only way he’s going to return to the path of Scientology.”

Unconditional love is what Scientology isn’t.

I mean the Scientology family turns their backs on their own family members because they’re not in good with the Church.

[Scene: Smith-Levin family photo]

[Screen: The Church challenges the credibility of the contributors appearing in this program, and their statements.
As of the airing of this episode, the Church has not agreed to participate.
Information the Church provided about matters discussed in this series can be viewed at:
aetv.com/aftermathletters]

AS: I finished the two years left on my staff contract, and then I joined the Sea Organization.

[Scene: photo of the twins; different angles; zooming in, etc.]

And the fact that I had a declared brother did sort of follow me around as a problem in the Sea org. My brother was always hanging in the background as a potential problem with Aaron. “He has a declared twin brother.”

[Screen: DECLARED
To be labeled a suppressive person or enemy of the Church]

[Scene: AS’s back yard]

AS: I met my wife Heather in the Sea Org and she was in a higher level organization than I was in. It was tradition in the organization she was in to ask the commanding officer for permission to get married. It’s supposed to be for show.

MR: (nods)

AS: It’s not literally supposed to be approved or disapproved.

LR: Right.

[Scene: photo of Collin Smith-Levin and Aaron Smith-Levin; photo of Collin and father]

AS: It came back disapproved.

The fact that I had a declared twin brother and also was in touch with my father who was in touch with my brother prevented me and Heather from being able to get married for a while.

So I was technically still connected to my brother although I hadn’t seen him or spoken to him in over a year.

LR: Right. It wasn’t enough.

AS: They made me sign something that said I would disconnect from my father. So that I could get f—ing married.

LR: Right.

AS: My father’s never been a Scientologist, and has never said one negative word about Scientology to me. How do you take disconnection to that level?

You can’t get married because you talk to your dad who talks to your brother. I mean, the stupidity is incredible.

[Scene: photo of Collin, Aaron and father Smith-Levin]

AS: Well at this point, I only talk to my father a couple times a year anyway, for like ten or fifteen minutes at a time. And I was like, “Look, but I’ll sign whatever you want me to sign, okay?” And I say, “Okay, fine, I’ll disconnect from my father.”

Now I say that nonchalantly, because in my mind I wasn’t disconnecting from my father. I was just getting a piece of paperwork out of the way so I could get married. Like it was a joke.

[Scene: AS with wife Heather]

[Screen: Aaron and Heather married in 2003]

AS (crying): And about six months after I joined the Sea org, I get a phone call from my dad. And I called him back and he said, “There’s been an accident, and your brother has died.”

And I just f—ing lost it.

And um, having to call my mom and tell her was probably the worst experience of my life.

Cuz I know that, I know that my mom was very, very much hoping that one day somehow everything was going to change and things would get better and she would see Collin again.

LR: (wipes eyes)

And so I had to wake her up. I called her, and she answered the phone out of a dead sleep. And I’m like, “Collin died in a car accident.”

And she just, she f—-ing lost it, you know? And um, I had to fight for, I had to fight to go to the funeral.

LR: Why?

AS: My commanding officer was like, “He was just an SP.”

LR: What?

AS: “He was just a Suppressive Person. Why would you bother taking time off post to go to the funeral?”

I’m like, “He’s my identical twin brother. That’s why.”

AS (crying): And I said to my dad, I said, “Do you think he would want me to go to the funeral?”

And he said, “I don’t think you understand how much your brother missed you.”

[Scene: photos of Aaron and Collin Smith-Levin]

He said, “We were at a restaurant with a bunch of friends, having dinner. And your name came up. And Collin just broke down at the table because of how much he missed you.”

LR (in studio): Do you know the pain of this mother and this brother looking back, going, “we gave up a relationship for the Church of Scientology and now he’s gone.”

[Scene: photo of Aaron and Collin with their mother]

LR: It, it it’s maddening. It’s maddening.

[00:32:51.386]
[Black screen]

[Screen: The Church challenges the credibility of the contributors appearing in this program, and their statements.
As of the airing of this episode, the Church has not agreed to participate.
Information the Church provided about matters discussed in this series can be viewed at:
aetv.com/aftermathletters]

AS (at home with MR and LR): Because of how much trouble Scientology had caused in his life, he didn’t talk about it much when he was going to college. Other than in his papers. I know this because when I went to the funeral, I met all of his friends, only some of whom even knew he had a twin brother.

I walked into the building, I said I wanted to see his body.

AS: And I walked into the building where that was going to happen. And his girlfriend was standing there, and she, she looked at me and she almost passed out. She didn’t know he had a twin brother. She thought I was f—-ing Collin walking into the room or something.

LR: (nods)

[Scene: group photo. Faces redacted except for Collin]

AS: I got to meet all these people when I went to his funeral who had been involved in his, in his life for the last three or four years. I went out with his friends for dinner, after, after the funeral. And they’re like, “Boy your brother hated Scientology.” They were like, “Yeah, he really f—ing hated Scientology.”

[Screen: Aaron and Heather left the Sea org in 2006 to have a family but continued to be Scientologists]

AS: It took me about a year or two after I left the Sea org to be comfortable reading um, media that was critical of Scientology.

[00:34:22.863]

LR (in studio): When you’re in Scientology, you, you believe what you’ve been taught. What you’ve been brainwashed. Most of us are second, third generation Scientologists. You’re raised in it. You believe that outside sources of information mean Scientology harm.

LR (with AS and MR): Because when you are a Scientologist, you go in every single day. 2 1/2 hours a day, minimum. 365 days a year. Correct?

MR: (nods)

AS: Yeah.

LR: When you’re going in, you’re reporting to your ethics officer or in session you’re reporting to your auditor. So you feel that you can’t withhold anything.

AS: Right.

LR: And you have to say, “I googled something.”

MR: (nods)

AS: Right.

LR: So to save yourself pain and agony, you just don’t do it.

MR (nods): Right.

AS: (nods)

[Scene: Sea Org members crossing the street in Clearwater]

AS: The mindset that I had was very, very hard to shake.

[00:35:16.203]
[Scene: St. Petersburg Times
June 21, 2009
INSIDE SCIENTOLOGY | A TIMES SPECIAL REPORT

AS: And what shook it was in 2009 when the St. Petersburg Times did the Truth Rundown Series of articles.

[Scene: pages from the Truth Rundown series]

AS: And high level executives from the Church, like Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder, and Tom DeVocht were saying how incredibly abusive the environment was at International Management.

For Scientology to be true, International Management had to be a utopia.

[Scene: photo of Sea Org members at Int Base]

AS: Nothing but highly trained Scientologists and veteran Sea Org members. If that place is an unpleasant and abusive place, then Scientology is not true.

AS (with MR and LR): And so it was electrifying. It was eye-opening. All Scientologists know who Mike Rinder is. They see him 5 times a year at almost every international event. And he’s a key speaker, introduced by David Miscavige.

LR: Right, right, correct.

AS: In my entire, this is embarrassing to look back on and admit: in my entire time on staff and working for the Church, it never occurred to me that anything I was told was false. Never.

MR: (smile)

LR: Right!

AS: It didn’t even cross my mind.

LR: Never! Never!

AS: That is what kept me in.

LR: Yeah.

AS: You know? So yeah, the St. Petersburg Times Truth Rundown was the beginning of the end. Me and my mom were both you know, reading and becoming aware of this data at the same time.

LR: Right.

AS: And we were both coming to the same conclusions at the same time.

[Scene: still photo of Aaron’s mother]

AS: My mom and her boyfriend–. Her boyfriend had gotten his son into Scientology. And his son was now grown and worked full time for the Church. And, and her boyfriend felt very guilty that he’d gotten his son, um down this direction in life.

So they sat down with his son and started talking to them about the stuff they’d been reading online. But he worked for the local Church. So he wrote them up that they were now um, sympathisers of the world’s biggest Suppressive Persons, and, and she got declared.

So they say, “She’s gone to the dark side.” That’s how Scientologists will put it. In the middle of a work day, I get called into my boss’s office. Um, and essentially I get told I’m going to be declared if I don’t disconnect from my mom.

Before my mom got declared, the Church actually called my employer. Because the guy is a VIP in Scientology. They let him know before me.

LR: What?

AS: That my mom is going to be declared.

Because it puts him in a legal situation of: Does he fire me if I stay connected to my mom?

So keep in mind, the guy who is employing me and my wife is asking me on the spot in his office, basically, if I want to lose my job and my friends and my family.

LR: So what happens?

AS: So for about a year I pretend to be disconnected from my mom.

LR: And you weren’t.

AS: No.

LR: Oh!

AS: Eventually I get turned in.

LR: By whom?

AS: Our kid’s nanny.

LR (laughing): Shut the f— up.

[Scene: enactment]

LR: So she found out like what, because she saw–?

AS: The kids would make comments that made it seem like they were still seeing their Gigi.

LR: Their grandma?

AS: Yeah.

LR: Like “Grandma this, grandma that.”

AS: She would, she wrote it up and turned it into the Church.

LR: So she wrote a Knowledge Report on you.

AS: Yeah.

So he (air quotes) “laid me off” just before I got declared. Right?

LR: Why did he lay you off?

AS: Because if, if I get declared and then he fires me, after having a stellar performance record for five years and getting raises and bonuses every year, then it’s obviously a discrimination lawsuit.

LR: So you lose your job.

AS: I lose my job. They call Heather in. They say, “You’ve got to divorce your husband, or you’re going to be declared.”

LR: Just as a matter of fact.

AS: “You’ve got to divorce your husband or–”

LR: She says?

AS: “That’s not going to work out for me.” We have three kids together.

LR: Okay.

AS: And within two weeks, my kids have been kicked out of their school and Heather had lost her job.

LR: Cuz Heather worked for a Scientology company?

AS: She worked for Narconon, which is the Scientology Drug Rehab network.

LR: And then your kids went to a Scientology school.

AS: My kids went to a local private school which is run by a former Sea Org member.

LR: Okay.

AS: Then her parents were called in. And “You’ve gotta disconnect from Heather and Aaron or you’re going to be declared.”

AS: I didn’t even expect what has happened now with my wife’s family to happen.

LR: So let me ask you this. Is she not connected to you by living here?

AS: She’s connected to us through our dog.

MR: (laughing)

She actually put a doggie door in her house so that our dog could have free rein in and out of her house. Like she just loves our dog, right?

LR: Okay.

AS: When I got declared, she found out about it, but she knew Heather wasn’t declared yet.

LR: Okay.

AS: So she had a talk with Heather and she said, “Okay, let’s have a conversation on how to handle the disconnection. And how we’re going to handle the disconnection with the children. But I don’t want to disconnect from the dog.”

MR: (laughs)

LR: I can’t–

AS: She said, “The dog wouldn’t understand.”

LR: Aaron, you’re a f—ing liar.

MR: (laughing)

AS: Serious.

LR: You’re a f—ing liar. These words did not come out of her mouth.

AS: Voicemail. Recorded.

MR: (laughing)

AS: She said, “The dog wouldn’t understand. I wouldn’t want him to feel like I, you know, didn’t want to see him anymore.”

MR: (laughing)

AS: And it, and I’m thinking, “no, but the kids totally get it.”

LR: Children get it. Right.

MR: (laughing)

AS: Right. The animals–that’s crossing a line.

MR: (laughing)

[Scene: trees; AS residence]

AS: You know I think that if Scientology still wants to be around in twenty years, they need to cancel disconnection cuz they’re killing themselves.

As much tragedy has happened, a lot of good has come out the other end. Our life is much happier now.

[Scene: Three children come in, hug Aaron]

AS: I never would have imagined I’d be able to live the life that I’m living now. We don’t have to worry about our friends spying on us or turning us in or reporting on us. We can just live our lives the way we want to live it.

[00:41:27.411]

LR: Can I get a hug?

Child (hugging LR): Yeah.

LR: Oh, girl love.

AS: I want people who are still in Scientology or who are on the fence to not be afraid to leave. If fear is the only thing keeping them in. Because Scientology instills that fear for a reason. They don’t want you to leave. You want you to think the world is a terrible place.

[00:41:53.191]
[Scene: Aaron playing in his yard with his children]

The world is a great place to live. (laughs)

[00:42:05.591]
[Screen: After dropping Leah at her hotel, the crew returned to the Scientology Flag Building to shoot additional footage]

[Scene: images of Flag]

[Screen: Shortly after arriving they were confronted by a representative from the Church of Scientology]

[Scene: Woman with umbrella walking near the Sandcastle Hotel]

Female: Do you know who the contact person is so that I can check with?

Alex Weresow: You can talk to me. What would you like to talk about?

Female: Well, no, no I just want to check with somebody from A&E.

The producer or…

AW: I’m the, I’m the producer.

I’m the, I’m the executive producer. My name is Alex.

Female: Your name’s Alex?

AS: Yeah. Alex Weresow.

Female: Good, I’ll get back with you.

AS: Okay, cool. And what was your name?

Female: Um. You know my name.

AW: What is your name, Ma’am?

Female: I’ll get back with you, okay?

AS: You don’t know your name?

Female: Yeah, of course I do.

AS: Why can’t you tell me your name?

Hm. All right.

[Screen: The woman who approached us was later confirmed to be Pat Harney, official spokesperson for Scientology]

AW (in vehicle): There’s a lot of cars with like um, tinted windows that we’re seeing over and over.

Oh, there’s that–

Male: Wow. Now that’s interesting.

Male: The third time we’ve seen that SUV.

Male: All right.

AW (on phone with LR): Hey Leah, how’s it going?

LR: Alright.

AS: So we’re um downtown in Clearwater, ah, shooting B-roll and it didn’t take more than thirty seconds for Security to come out and ask what we were doing. And I told them that we were doing a, a documentary.

LR: Are you guys being followed now or what?

[00:43:35.971]
AW: Um, this van has also been there for quite some time. They know. And it was very, very–

LR: But you’re okay, right?

AS: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

LR: But you know you should expect it now. You should expect them following you. You should expect, you know….

AS: Yeah.

LR: –them knocking on your door, asking what your business–

And you know, Alex, you don’t need to tell them sh–.

[Screen: ON THE NEXT EPISODE]

[00:43:51.195]
LR (in vehicle with MR): The Church of Scientology is accusing me of inciting hate crimes.

[Scene: Los Angeles Org; enactment of a hammer having gone through a window]

LR: Brandon Reisdorf drove to the Church of Scientology and threw a hammer through a window.

[Scene: photo of Brandon Reisdorf]

BR: I should have been in a psychiatric hospital.

LR (to MR in car): We’re dealing with mental illness.

[Scene: Aftermath guests at a table

John Sweeney: It starts eating into your head.

Tony Ortega: Who are these people? Why are they doing these things?

LR: This is taking it to a level that is so f—ing vile.

[00:44:21.178]
LR (in studio): I’m not going to be intimidated. The Church will get exposed. And I’m not going to stop.

LEAH REMINI
SCIENTOLOGY AND THE AFTERMATH

[Screen: The Church challenges the credibility of the contributors appearing in this program, and their statements.

As of the airing of this episode, the Church has not agreed to participate.

Information the Church provided about matters discussed in this series can be viewed at:
aetv.com/aftermathletters]